Chokehold
by Alfenide
Summary: "Just because you grow up in a family of abusive monsters doesn't mean you have to become one." And Thomas Ward tries not to. He really does.
1. genesis

.

"Just because you grow up in a family of abusive monsters doesn't mean you have to become one."

* * *

 **[** 1 **]**

And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.  
And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.  
And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.  
Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.  
And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:  
All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.  
 **-** **Genesis 7:17-22.**

Antonio Di Nicola Jewelry wasn't much in the way of a big deal. He knew that. It certainly wasn't much of a big deal for someone with a B.A. in Economics, let alone one from the University of Chicago, with a GPA of 3.5— _with_ Honors, and a stellar record in Varsity Baseball. It wasn't what he first had in mind. It certainly wasn't what his parents had in mind. But despite the, as his mother had once put it, _lackluster_ career prospects paved way for a jewelry store employee—working for Antonio Di Nicola as an accountant was not the wrong choice to make.

It wasn't a mistake when his first paycheck came into his account. It wasn't a mistake when he earned a few extra hundred dollars after learning how to repair watches and rings, either.

Bertram Walker doesn't make mistakes. Incidentally, neither does Thomas Ward.

Oh, sure, he might not know how to solve a problem immediately, but once you've shown him how to do something, or given him the tools, the resources, to learn on his own accord, wherever it's as simple as navigating to his new apartment or as complex as multi-dimensional integral calculus, he won't make a mistake doing it. It's one of his virtues. Like being able to run to first base in less than four seconds. So when Thomas slaps the door into the store that morning, clutching a styrofoam cup of coffee and a Breakfast Burrito, it isn't a mistake and he knows it.

See, Bertram Walker hasn't got prospects. His family life before college was practically non-existent; he grew up in the Birch Hill Home for Boys, struggled his way through Head Start and, suffered through a disappointing childhood where nobody stays for long and greed is the short and long of everything. Ergo, by the end of it, Bertram Walker has nothing to lean on aside from an intimate grasp of the bible and a skewed perception of how family works. Oh, and a mind for how math works. That's something. That's something that can get him good grades, that can get him a scolarship—working hard is something that can make that scholarship worthwhile, and find work when he graduates. According to Bertram Walker, that is how the world works. Thomas Ward is not entirely dissimilar. Sure, Thomas Ward had a family. He had a brilliant education and was handed his place at Chicago on a silver platter, but if he wants prospects, real prospects, he's got to strike it out on his own. He's got to ignore his old bank account. He's got to begrudgingly write Christmas cards a week before the New Year. He's got to visit his parents sparingly, when he's sure that it's safe.

Ultimately, Thomas Ward and Bertram Walker are on their own. If they want something, they'll have to fight for it themselves, because there is no way that anything else will. That is what the world taught them.

Mrs. Pacini, his boss' wife, also knows that Thomas working here is the correct decision. She's stood behind the counter when he enters.

"Bertrando!" She greets, voice high and tight, dark hair pulled back in a bun behind her head. She wrestles her bulk out from behind the glass cabinets, making a beeline for Thomas, who can't manage to put his breakfast down before she's pinching at his stomach, clicking her tongue unhappily. She has a big, round face with rivers of veins and canyons of crevices, helter-skelter gray hair, a movie screen forehead, and Katharine Hepburn cheekbones. In fact, right now she reminds Thomas of Queen Eleanor in The Lion in Winter.

 _War agrees with you, Bertrando. I keep informed; I follow all your slaughters from a distance._

What can Thomas say? He likes old movies.

The only part about Mrs. Pacini that doesn't look age appropriate is her eyes. They're glossy, bright, and young. They grip people when she's mad, like monster fists. She never uses her bare hands to get people's attention, which is good, 'cause she could choke an elk; she's six feet tall, and packing a good three hundred pounds. There's no ignoring her when she's in your vicinity. She's a presence. A planet. She has her own gravity. But in the end, it's her eyes that pull people in.

And, of course, her many and varied theories on Thomas and, more often than not, Thomas' weight.

"You are getting thin!" She admonishes loudly and pinches at him a second time. Thomas is glad that they haven't opened yet, because, well, _geez_. What a way to make an entrance. "Come winter you will freeze, tsk—last I saw you, you look like a cherub, now you look like a skinny man-child. Bertrando! You come by our house sometime, now, hn? I make you a good dinner. Put some meat back on those bones."

Thomas doesn't remind Mrs. Pacini that he's actually working in reverse in terms of his weight, here. He's not exactly... _trim_ at the moment, despite what she might believe. In fact, he's had to start watching it. It's become a right pain to keep off.

He leans over, kisses her on the cheek absently in greeting and sighs. "You're too kind."

And she is. They both are, the pair of them, Mr. and Mrs. Pacini. They've been good to him since he first got here a year ago, and even after the incident, they've been there. Genevieve, too. It makes him realise just how darn lucky he's been. Considering.

"Now, Sonya, you leave the boy alone." Gripes Mr. Pacini from the back room.

Mrs. Pacini lets out a disapproving noise at the back of her throat. Thomas sighs again, offers a small smile as he retreats, and takes his breakfast into the back room. Mr. Pacini himself is leaning over some boxes, the silver hair atop of his head reflecting the fluorescent lights.

"You lose something?" Thomas asks, and Mr. Pacini stands up straight.

"Bah! What don't I lose now I am old, hn? My glasses, papers—some lady phoned us last night about a ring, and I cannot find her number. She'll be wondering what is taking us so long!"

Of course, his boss still lived in a world where phones had cords and the only way to store important information was to write it down on paper. Thomas glanced once at the stack of annual reports on the deck opposite and mentally assesses the chances of actually leaving on time today. He was supposed to be meeting Genevieve for lunch, but, well... Mr. Pacini is getting on, now. If he can't find the number at this very moment, he probably never will, unless Thomas steps in. He might even start to forget about the ring entirely.

That sort of thing isn't very good for business, understandably, so Thomas sets down his breakfast and takes off his coat.

"Come on, it can't be very far. I'll help you look."

 **[** 1 **]**

 **1995.**

On the day that the Russian ruble drops to 3,947 per dollar and 1994-95 NHL Season begins after a lengthy strike, six-year-old Thomas Ward and his older brother Grant are out in the back garden, searching for the baseball that Christian lobbed out of the third-story window yesterday afternoon. Thomas' baseball. The one with Mickey Mantle's autobiography on it.

"Mom'll get angry about it, if we'd tell, y'know." Thomas notes, dressed in his winter duds and wellingtons. It gives Grant the impression of an overstuffed sausage.

He shakes his head. "Why. So she can just go n'yell at me, too?"

"You didn' do nothin'."

"That doesn't matter." Grant grumbles. "Come on. The sooner we find it, the sooner we can play."

It's not that he blames Thomas for leaving his baseball out. Christian would break anything if you'd let him—and there was sure no stopping him if he put his mind to it, but it doesn't help that Thomas doesn't quite understand that you can't _do_ anything about it. Grant has the sneaking suspicion that he never will. Understand, that is.

'Cause Thomas doesn't get told off by Mom like Grant and Christian do. Dad, fair enough, it's rare, but he can certainly get incensed enough to divert his frustrations towards Thomas if it comes to it. Mom would never hit Thomas, though. Certainly not. So Thomas doesn't get that getting upset, crying and wailing over broken toys and bruises will only make things worse.

Because the more Thomas wines, the more Christian, and Grant, to some degree get punished. The more that happens, the more they get resentful, and the more resentful they get, the more likely it is Christian will seek them out to divert his frustrations at Thomas and him. It's just a cycle that keeps on going.

And Thomas certainly makes things worse, even if he doesn't mean too. That's why they're outside on a cold January morning, trying to find Thomas' baseball before Mom comes out and asks them what they're up to.

Thomas stands up on the little wall that runs around the flower patch and sticks his arms out, balancing along. "Can we go to the park to play with it?" he asks. "I wanna practice my fastball."

Grant actually can't see this as a bad idea. It'll keep them out of Mom's way at least, and with Dad out in his regional office, the only real problem they'll have is Christian. But Christian was pretty old, now. He didn't like to hang around little kids like Thomas. Never had, but now there was some kind of big kid thing preventing him from even hanging around Thomas at home, let alone outside. Unless he was angry, that is. Grant, well, Thomas could be annoying, sure, and he was a wimp at times, but he wasn't all that bad. He did what Grant told him to, most of the time, and he was pretty swell at baseball.

In short, perhaps out of mutual bond, perhaps out of necessity—surrounded by near-enemies on all sides in a house that was too big to feel love, Grant and Thomas only really have each other. They were as much as best friends as they were brothers.

 **[** 1 **]**

Thomas had been dating Genevieve Rutherford for little over a month. She was a news correspondent who worked for one of the state newspapers and they met last Christmas, when she had come in looking for a nice necklace for her sister-in-law. He still doesn't know how he did it, honestly, with his awkward ways and soft demeanor when Genevieve herself was full of fire and idealism, but gradual visits to the store had eventually turned into trips out, and what was a reasonably platonic relationship ultimately developed into something much more. Something Thomas actually considered impossible, at one point. There was a time when he was too paranoid to let anyone near him.

He's been getting better at. Genevieve, and her large circle of friends—his boss and his extended family, they help with that. Help make Bertram Walker more than just a cover-up, anyway.

Thomas on the phone talking to her about wherever or not that little cafe down the street would be an acceptable place to meet or not (they do make some mean steak sandwiches, he's just saying) when he hears the gunshot. Genevieve must have heard it too because she demands to know what it was, but Thomas really doesn't have the time to explain.

So he quickly disconnects the call and sits up from where he was originally slouched, heart pounding, eyes diverting toward the front of the store. This could be a robbery. It could. All evidence points toward it. Surely that is not such of an impossibility in a jewelry store of all places.

But he's also got the sneaking suspicion that it isn't. This place hasn't been robbed in the entirety of its history; it's in a good neighborhood, and there is a police precinct a mere block away. So if people are going to storm this place, it's not going to be for the hundred-plus dollar jewelry, that's for sure. Thomas sticks his hands up, throwing his cellphone against the desk in one smooth motion as he does so.

Sure enough, when that dark-suited fellow comes in, shotgun in hand, and seems to stop at the sight of him, Thomas knows he's been found.

Because Thomas Ward doesn't often make mistakes. If ever. And he'd be foolish to assume otherwise, now.

Still, he would like to know...

"How'd you find me?"


	2. serotonin

.

 **[** 2 **]**

He hadn't made it easy for them, that was for sure.

Before S.H.I.E.L.D. fell, Coulson had access to a legendary intelligence web. It was extensive, it was accurate; if he had wanted information back when he was working under Fury, he could have it at a second's notice, and his information packet on the subject of his choosing would be complete with additional data—referrals, anything he could possibly need to incite a thorough investigation at his pleasure. If they had hit a blank and they _couldn't_ find information, then they had the resources to correct that, to examine and learn.

Now, Coulson has none of that. Not really. He has information, granted—files and files of old performance reviews and psychological reports. He has the things that Fury left behind, the Playground, the leftover S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouses.

But when it came to Grant Ward, he only had what he could salvage. Anything he had kept during the rise of HYDRA, anything he could pick up from the ashes; reports from other Agents, etcetera. There was also the possibility that everything on Ward's file was doctored in itself; that it would lead to dead ends, or spiral on into lines of investigation that were nothing but placeholders.

In the case of Thomas Ward, it was a placeholder. An unhealthy blend of secrecy on account of Grant Ward, and mystery on account of Thomas himself. Two parties essentially running into the dark in different directions, a blend of not-quite-truths and shouldn't-be-truths that contradicted one another, conflicted against each other, and generally made putting everything into a coherent whole impossible.

Coulson first had concrete evidence to Thomas'—or Bertram's, now—whereabouts after his parents had been murdered. That had taken a lot of willing, a lot of searching, and a lot of secrecy in itself. It had taken months before Coulson became convinced that they weren't looking for Thomas Ward at all, but rather someone else completely. Someone who perhaps wasn't in hiding, per say, because in the world that they lived in, had nothing to hide—living happily as someone else, as a productive member of society, among thousands of other people doing exactly the same.

Trying to find someone who wasn't in hiding, it appears, is far harder than actually finding someone who is.

The whole plain sight cliche wasn't as far-fetched as Coulson first thought it. He had looked back at then-18-year-old Thomas Ward's high-school records and had them run against the scores for in nearby universities for the same age bracket, but that brought up nothing. It got Coulson thinking, though. Grant once mentioned that his brother's played baseball. He had also mentioned to Fitz that he was good at math. Two little details, one potentially large breakthrough.

In the end, they ran the identities of everyone in Thomas Ward's age bracket who had a high-percentile in mathematics and science with a significant sporting history in college systems, and then, in a facial recognition system against Grant Ward's younger photographs. From a bracket of 12.2 million students, they came back with a collection of thirty-six.

People could disappear in this world very easily if they wanted to.

And Thomas Ward really, _really_ wanted to.

Because the file that May dropped off in his office wasn't the one Coulson was expecting.

 **[** 2 **]**

Unconsciousness is not a snare one can easily be freed from. Thomas has a few false starts. At first he thought he was in his parent's house; Gramsie was there; Grant was leaning in through the window; Father told him to wake up; Christian was shaking him, visiting hours were over... The last time he woke up delirious in cocoon like this, he had been unable to breathe for four minutes and twenty-six seconds. It's the only memory he has of his mother checking on him to make sure he was okay, and it was not a clear one.

Her hand was cold on his hot face. She had sung him back to sleep, that time.

Now, Thomas was not feverish, but severely concussed. He couldn't stay awake; whatever it was they had given him to keep him quiet, on top of... whatever happened in the first place, had been enough to finally do him in for good. He doesn't know how long it took for him to wake up properly. He opened his eyes in the dark and although he saw, he did not comprehend.

Something loud and heavy roared through the air at one point; his watch beeped. Eight o'clock. Thomas fell back asleep.

The sound of fist pounding into metal is enough to startle Thomas into some half-botched survival instinct. He had lost consciousness crumpled up, bent in half on the metal floor. He could smell the blood from here. Had he hurt himself? Or had they?

When he finally manages to make sense of... something... his face is stinging, his mouth his taped shut, he's sure that one of his elbows his bleeding, and his hands are scraped to bits. He can't move them either. Those are the things that bring him back. That make him think. He can't bring his hands around to brush his hair away from his forehead. It's all of these things, little small things that his semi-conscious mind grasps, acting as irrefutable evidence that he is, in fact, alive.

Thomas is alive.

Blinking unsteadily, he focuses on his knees and attempts to frown. Then he tries to move his hands again. No go. They're stuck behind his back.

He struggles, trying to place everything. The last thing he can lucidly recall is the moment right before he lost consciousness, back at work, but after... there was an attacker, he got hit—his face hurts, but there was also a drug, he knows. His head feels too heavy and stuffy with the unnatural drowsiness. Perhaps it was that, or the cocktail of prazosin and serotonin is coming back to haunt him in full force. Perhaps he doesn't even want to remember.

Thomas doesn't have a choice, either way, because once they realise that he's woken up—they're on him immediately. Surrounding him on one side, two males and a female, one of which, the eldest, Thomas recognises. It's the uniform. The guy with the shotgun.

He panics, tries to move away, forcing out breaths like he's been caught dead in the middle of a marathon, but his legs are still numb; it leaves him kicking about awkwardly and half-falling onto his back.

"You really think he can lead us to Ward?"

Oh _God_.

Thomas feels sick. He's rather sure that it has nothing to do with the concussion, either, or the drug.

"What I realized about Ward is that every twisted thing he does is just a misguided attempt to justify his past." The one he recognises moves forwards. Thomas stares. "But there's one thing in his past he can never make right."

The tape is ripped from his mouth, and Thomas grimaces hard, breathing in and out and in again as soon as he can, taking in the fresh air like a man starved. Being able to breathe feels good, but the foreboding sense of sheer blazing panic certainly does not. Thomas can feel his morning breakfast churning in his stomach.

"What is this?" He asks, looking up, then around, then back at the familiar one. "Did my brother send you?"

"Grant Ward?" The other male had a British accent. "Doesn't even know you're here, mate."

A resigned look from the familiar shotgun wielding one. "But he's about to."

 _Oh God oh God_.

 **[** 2 **]**

 **911 TRANSCRIPT  
** Recorded by Massachusetts Department of Public Health  
February 6, 1997.

00:00:00 **911 Operator #1:** _911 What's your emergency?  
_ 00:00:19 **Caller** : _My name is Grant Ward and I'm twelve and my brother fell into the Well and I think he's drowned.  
_ 00:00:21 **911 Operator #1:** _Okay, Grant? You said your name is Grant? Where is your brother now?  
_ 00:05:11 **Grant Ward:** _He's was in the Well. It's in the back garden. My brother was there.  
_ 00:05:11 **Grant Ward:** _I think he's going to die. I need an ambulance. Please.  
_ 00:07:16 **911 Operator #1** : _Grant? I need to know where you are. Are you at your house?  
_ 00:08:05 **Grant Ward:** _I live at [REDACTED]. That's the big house. With the blue door. But he's outside._  
00:09:24 **911 Operator #1:** _Okay, Grant. An ambulance is coming, okay? Where is your brother now?_  
00:11:12 **Grant Ward:** _...(unintelligible)—screaming. My Mom is screaming._  
00:13:07 **911 Operator #1:** _Hang on, are your parents there?_  
00:15:03 **Grant Ward:** _My Dad is trying to make him breathe._  
00:16:01 **911 Operator #1** : _Your brother?_ _Your father is with your brother?_  
00:18:11 **Grant Ward:** _Yes._  
00:18:19 **911 Operator #1** : _Is your brother awake? Is he out of the water?_  
00:21:26 **Grant Ward:** _He fell in and he couldn't get out. I tried... but I... I tried..._  
00:23:00 **Grant Ward:** _I had a rope. I put the rope in. Lowered it but..._  
00:24:00 **Grant Ward:** _Please send an ambulance. I don't want my brother to die._  
00:26:24 **Grant Ward:** _I'm sorry. I don't want him to die._  
00:27:12 **911 Operator #1:** _Okay, is he conscious? Is he conscious?_  
00:29:13 **Grant Ward:** _I don't know...(unintelligible)..._  
00:31:09 **911 Operator #1:** _What is going on?_  
00:32:13 **Grant Ward:** _...(unintelligible)..._  
00:33:49 **RADIO:** _...(tone - signal broadcast)..._  
00:34:01 **Background Voice:** _...(unintelligible)..._  
00:35:20 **Grant Ward:** _...(unintelligible) thought he was dead,_  
00:39:08 **Grant Ward:** _... My Mom is screaming._  
00:39:29 **Grant Ward:** _...I don't even know (unintelligible)..._  
00:44:04 **911 Operator #1:** _We've got an ambulance coming. Just, can you stay with your parents and your brother?_  
00:49:28 **Grant Ward:** _My Mom is screaming._  
00:40:10 **Grant Ward:** _...(unintelligible)..._  
00:51:15 **Grant Ward:** _I don't want my brother to die, please._  
00:51:19 **911 Operator #1** : _Okay._  
00:55:06 **Grant Ward:** _Please don't let my brother die._  
00:57:17 **911 Operator #1:** _Grant? Are you there? Grant, I need to ask you, how long was your brother in for?_  
00:58:26 **Grant Ward** : _My brother?_  
00:58:28 **911** **Operator #1:** _How long was your brother underwater for?_  
01:01:02 **911** **Operator #1:** _Grant, are you still there?_  
01:01:16 **RADIO:** _...(unintelligible)..._  
01:03:05 **RADIO:** _...(unintelligible)..._  
01:04:07 **911 Operator #1:** _Are you still there?_  
01:04:07 **Grant Ward:** _No, I don't. Hurry up, please! Please! Hurry up!_  
01:07:08 **911 Operator #1:** _Okay we've got an ambulance en route. Just stay with your parents, Grant._  
01:08:11 **Grant Ward:** _Okay._  
01:08:22 **911 Operator #1:** _Is your brother there? Can you see your brother?_  
01:10:03 **Grant Ward:** _His name is Thomas._  
01:10:26 **911 Operator #1:** _Is Thomas there?_  
01:11:28 **Grant Ward:** _I... Dad is... Dad got him out. The rope. He couldn't..._  
01:12:21 **Grant Ward:** _Please._  
01:14:10 **911 Operator #1:** _They're there, honey._

 **[** 2 **]**

"If you lay a finger on Thomas..."

The call disconnects.

His chest tightens and his forehead warms. Thereissomeonewho'dliketosayhello. Ibroughtafriendalong. I. Brought. A. Friend. Along.

It was like a vexing of the soul for what Grant felt was not human, it was twisted and distorted but it was something strong. It burned like fire lacing in his veins and creeping up along his spine, his skin was a sore looking red but all he could feel was desire; desire to hate. He was intoxicated with turmoil he had no intention of ever letting control him again, the acidity of it was residing in his stomach waiting to be spat out of his mouth in foul and vulgar words, except he wasn't going to say them, he was going to screech them with every ounce of breath that dwelled in his lungs as soon as he got Coulson back on the phone.

That is, if he was going to phone back.

They had Thomas.

They had Thomas.

They had Thomas.

Thomas, who Grant hasn't seen in... what, ten years? More? Thomas who he last saw being pulled away by their parents. Thomas who had looked up toward the burning house and cried? Who wouldn't look at him through the police car window?

Thomas, who Grant had thought about during the delirious first days of his isolation in the forest. Who he'd sometimes think about during holiday periods. Who he'd worried about.

Thomas, who was fully grown yet still as small and weak in Ward's mind as the day their father pulled him out of the well.

The sight of Hunter pressing the barrel up against his baby brother's head was enough to make Ward want to tear the nearest man limb from limb, but that won't get him anywhere. It won't. Think, Ward. Use your head.

He navigates to last call return.

 **[** 2 **]**

It takes Thomas a moment to calm down. He has problems with this. Calming down. Not because he's angry, or anything... Good God, no. It's just that it's been... what, hours? Hours since he last took his pills, and he can feel his heart racing, like...

The gun is gone but Thomas can still feel it pressing against his scalp, and his throat hurts from screaming even though his mouth is clamped as tight as he can make it. He's terrified. Of Grant, of these people here. Trapped in a cage of metal, bathed in blood and pure adrenaline. So he does what Genevieve makes him do when he throws himself out of bed in the early hours of the morning some nights, screaming, when he starts clutching his hair so hard that he could rip it out, when he's reliving every single _second_ —though he can't do that. Not with his hands tied behind his back.

Thomas talks.

He talks, he demands—anything, _anything_ to try and push the thought of dying out of his mind. He talks because if he's talking, then maybe, maybe he's okay.

They seem to indulge him, at least.

"So all that talk about a traumatic childhood is just rubbish, then?" The British once asks. Thomas pulls a face.

"I'm sure whatever he told you about our parents is true," He replied, breathing in sharply and thinking, _yes. Okay. He can do this. Talking. He can do that._ "See, my dad, he had some real anger issues... and my mom, well, she had dad issues, so they spent most of their time taking those issues out on us."

And he remembers.

Grant, screaming when he was younger. Silently crying when he was in Third grade. Standing expressionless after that. Christian doing the same. His mother screaming at his father, at them, at Christian.

Dad pushing Grant out through the window when he had too much to drink.

Mom watching.

Christian walking away first.

"What about your brothers? Were you close?"

There is one thing he remembers. When he was little, when he was in the bath. Christian had told him that Grant was going to help him wash his hair.

That is not what he did.

"Christian was a lot older, so we never really hung out much, but Grant..."

Thomas reflects on warm afternoons in parks with bright red swings. At tossing fastballs at each other. At playing basketball. Or Grant teaching him how to hotwire a car during muggy evenings when every other normal family was saying grace at dinner.

"He was my best friend. Protected me from mom and dad, from Christian... And one day, he didn't."

Something flashes over the older man's face. "The day he pushed you down the well."

Thomas nods. "Grant totally changed after that. It was like he felt guilty but couldn't admit what had really happened. Instead, he kept promising never to let anyone hurt me again."

And Thomas does remember that. Waking up in hospital and fearing for his life when Grant was the only one there.

"Slightly unnerving coming from the guy who just chucked you down a well." The British one grumbles.

"You two keep in touch?" The blonde female who has so far treated him a heck of a lot more like a human being than the rest of them, asks. "Family reunions, holidays, that sort of thing?"

Thomas nearly splutters. "Grant was seventeen when he burned my parents' house down, with Christian inside. Ever since, I've made sure to give him a pretty wide berth."

"Pretty sound logic, actually."

The older man nods at the British one's comment.

The woman meanwhile gives them a glance, and regards Thomas gently. "Well, you don't really seem like your brother."

Thomas sighs.

"Just 'cause you grow up in a family of abusive monsters doesn't mean you have to become one."

And then, almost vacantly.

"I didn't."


	3. 16 hours 9 minutes

.

 **[** 3 **]**

The thing is about Thomas is that he's grown up now. And he doesn't mean that indeterminately, like he's "grown up" because he packs a hundred and seventy odd pounds and has a beard and shops at places like Ebay. He's grown up because he acts it. He looks back at past problems and has the sense to go, "Okay, no. That's bad. Let's not do that again" and actually take the steps to prevent it. He hasn't always done that, no, but he does now. Or he tries to, at least.

He's grown up. So it surprises him on a... disturbing level to find that Grant, in all the years that have gone by, hasn't.

Physically. Maybe. If Christian is anything to go by, defiantly. But the Grant Ward on the other end of the phone, Thomas felt, was not in any ounce different from the Grant Ward that shook his head defiantly back in his hospital room back when they were children. The same Grant Ward that had protested some form of innocence—that it wasn't _his_ fault—when he burned down their home, with everything, with _Christian_ , inside. The same Grant Ward that very nearly became a murderer at seventeen. The same Grant Ward that vanished from the face of the Earth, only to return and finish the damn job he started, as an adult, years after he'd supposedly, which is what everyone had unspokenly assumed, moved on. The same Grant Ward that Thomas had grown to fear, completely, utterly, who kept him paranoid, when he was supposed to be getting better. A ghost he couldn't shake no matter how far Thomas removed himself.

Thomas had hoped for something. He had. Pined for it, defiantly. He had _wanted_ to get on that phone, to speak to Grant, for something more. Not just out of some need to satisfy his kidnappers. God, even a simple _sorry_ would have sufficed. Something, anything, to make Thomas feel the slightest hint of safety from who used to be his one and only protector. That maybe Grant had gone through Hell and shown the slightest inkling of coming out of the other side. That maybe the only living connection to his old life would be worthwhile. But he'd only gotten excuses. And if there is anything that this world has taught Thomas, it's that excuses just don't cut it anymore.

 _Suck it up, tonto. You can think. You can walk. You can always move forwards._

Preaching his old Coach Angeleno makes Thomas sick to the stomach, but he takes the sentiment to heart. Always has.

They, his so-called kidnappers, drop him off literally on the other side of Boston, but Thomas doesn't mind. He needs to walk. Clear his mind. Apparently he's got a security detail now, somewhere, but God, Thomas is having nothing to do with that if he can help it. Grant doesn't know Bertram Walker. And if those... Those whoever they were, if they stay away, he won't have no reason to know, either. Hopefully, they'll just fly away and leave him the heck alone. Grant, too. Thomas just wants to be left alone.

Something tells Thomas that his brother has got other things on his mind, anyway.

Which is good, right? It means he can get on with his life, too.

Easier said than done. Thomas tries, but by the time he's got to Newton everything that has happened in the past few hours is starting to become a bit too much. He checks his watch. 16 Hours and 9 Minutes since he last took his freaking medicine. No wonder he's losing it.

Thomas rubs at his face and throws himself behind a nearby dumpster, squatting down to press his head between his knees. His mind is moving faster than Tony Stark can speak, like someone's broke the remote and it's stuck on fast forward with the volume jammed right up. He knows what will happen if he can't keep himself still; he'll start moving around the area with the way his brain his demanding the energetic expenditure of an athlete, but he'll get lost that way. Or hurt himself. So Thomas makes himself squat down. Then he starts talking, because talking is better than screaming, even though he doesn't seem to have enough time to say what it is he needs to. The words are coming out crowded together, some of them even missing entirely, and all fears tumbling out unchecked, in some kind of mental free-fall...

Thomas wants to douse his brain in cold water, to chill the whole thing right out, but that's not exactly a possibility. A coffee sounds good, but Thomas also knows that the caffeine will put him right over the edge.

He learned in college that he can blame evolutionary biology for his painful memories. Brains are hardwired to remember the bad stuff. To help you keep alive.

It's ironic, really. What Thomas needs right now is the good stuff, the happier stuff, the uplifting and hopeful and not the narrow dark space with the _water_ —

Thomas grabs a fistful of his hair and pulls. Hard. Hyperventilating like he hasn't in years.

He never knows how old he is in the flashbacks, except smaller. Dad's patterns were set long before he could form memories, so they easily became instinct to manage and avoid. Christian didn't hate him as much when he was little. He remembers it being cold. That day. Dad had freaked out. Mom had freaked out. Christian had suffered the brunt of it. Thomas doesn't know why. Grant does. At least, that's what Thomas has pierced together.

What happened before isn't the moment that his mind forces him to relive.

A finger, threatening. "You wish you could hit hard enough, Grant."

Christian suggesting that they should go out and play baseball in the back garden. Down where the well was.

Darkness. Fast, screaming darkness. Then cold. Wet. But cold. Very cold. Silence. _Water_.

Rationalizing himself out of it isn't working, but Thomas doesn't have his medication on him. He doesn't take it to work. It doesn't seem like the right thing to do. What normal people do.

But he's regretting it. His breathing is harsh and loud in the sparse, dark alleyway. The less he tries to focus on it the more he does, and he loses count of the seconds and minutes as they pass until he looks up at the sky and it's pink.

Not that he's capable of much more than that; his chest is heaving and his hands and feet have long gone numb, a pitiable amount of oxygen is actually getting to his brain, and he's starting to lose the edges of his vision along with most of his hearing. That went almost immediately. His ears ringing as soon as he gave control over to the memories his mind was forcing to the surface.

He can't stay here, Thomas knows. He needs to get up. To move. He checks his watch. He's been sat here for three hours.

It takes a long time after that. A very long time. From getting up on his feet to fumbling down the alleyway towards the street, to making it to the avenue—toward the park, then. On and on and on, slowly at times, more hurriedly at others. His feet ache, his back hurts and his head is pounding something fierce, but if he stops, he won't keep on going, and then he'll have it. He'll just curl up on the sidewalk somewhere until someone finds him, and that's... No. That's not acceptable.

When Thomas finally finds her house, he's borderline on erratic.

This thing with Genevieve he has going on, it's great—better than the last relationship he had gone through, simply because once they actually determined that it was a thing, it was a big thing that did not seem to be a big thing, which made it, almost, a far bigger thing (granted, determining that it's a thing does take a while, and is kind of awkward). His relationship with Maggie always felt a little like two pieces from the same puzzle that looked like they should snap together but didn't, and the effort to try and make them go together was always kind of exhausting. But with Genevieve, things had just settled. Six weeks after Thomas had drunkenly kissed her at Mr. Pacini's Thanksgiving party, he's buying bizarrely casual things like kitchen roll and kale and she's stocking his favorite coffee and knows his shoe size, and things are so low-key that most of their extended friends never seemed to take notice until they're going on vacation together and it becomes frightfully obvious.

It's barely acknowledged, which Thomas feels is more on the lines of what Christian and Anne had been operating on, which also feels strange, because they had been married for years. That kind of casual, everyday relationship that should be straight up disallowed for people like him, even in pretend.

It's refreshing, though, to know where you stand in a relationship and where you want to stand in that relationship. It makes everything else so much easier, and more comfortable, and almost even empowering. It feels adult, and unlike the other ways; where he's acting like an adult for the sake of being "Bertram Walker" every second of every day, this feels... normal.

Like he's neither Thomas Andrew Ward or Bertram Thomas Walker but just _Thomas_.

And Genevieve knows him as this ostensible Thomas, good and bad in all; pathetic and worthwhile in all. When she opens the door with a hard jerk once he rings the doorbell, like she somehow knows it's him despite the fact _he hasn't rung the doorbell since last year_ , Thomas knows that, now at least, he's safe. For however how long.

Too bad with the way he is, crying too hard and with the lingering flashing images that trick his mind into thinking he's back in that fucking, _fucking_ well, he can't express it.

It's nothing new. But that doesn't mean that Thomas has learned to deal with it. Because he hasn't.

He hasn't at all.

 **[** 3 **]**

Thomas Ward and Bertram Walker are both dealing with post-traumatic stress and only one of them has got it right, so far—Walker likes to work and Ward takes a bit too much of anything that's prescribed to him; Genevieve Rutherford's father was an alcoholic and her mother a compulsive gambler. When the going gets tough, she doesn't stick around. Sometimes she would disappear for days. Sometimes Thomas is bad on those days, but for the most part, he doesn't mind. It's up to her to decide what she best knows how to do; so she puts thousands of miles between herself and her problems. Like when her father died, covering a three-week NATO fact-finding mission in Northwest Pakistan.

She'd come back with the same look in her eyes that he got when he'd finally completed the 1933 Goudey baseball card set. She'd come back with bruises, with scratches on the palms of her hands, under her gloves. She always came back as soon as she could, even if it meant getting in at five in the morning, just as Thomas groggily pulled himself out of bed, looking haunted and tired, after a fractured night of sleep.

He's graduated from constant, deliberate terror to accidental occasional panic. Like if he steps out into traffic a bit too early, for instance; that heart racing shudder where his stomach drops to his knees because _holy God, that had been close_ , but not _if I walk down this hallway at this certain time, will it be Christian or Grant waiting for me on the other side_? That's the difference.

But it still comes back to him. It comes back to him in nightmares, in memories—sometimes after experiences like he'd just encountered.

The nightmares are easy. It's hard to have a nightmare when you hardly sleep in the first place.

As for the others. Well, they're not easy. But that's what the pills are for.

 **[** 3 **]**

Morse strides across the deck of the Quinjet and retakes her place before the console, flicking her hair over her ear.

"That could have gone better." She tells Coulson, firmly, very deliberately. And it could. Bobbi doesn't like hurting people that don't deserve it. Neither does Coulson, normally.

Of course, he might not like it. But there is a difference between actively pursuing a morally difficult choice and being forced to.

Coulson doesn't reply to her statement, per say; he instead regards Morse and Hunter with a side-eye glance. "When we get Ward—and we will, I want you on his detail when not on the field."

Hunter grunts. "No offense, but I'm probably the second-to-last person he want's to see."

"If you're the one breaking the good news, Agent Hunter, I don't think that'll be the case." Coulson replies wryly. "As for now, I want my team back."

She glances away from the screen. "We didn't tell him what to say about the police."

Coulson manages a strained smile.

"He's lived this long in the dark, Agent Morse. Something tells me he's not going to have a problem."

 **[** 3 **]**

And he doesn't. Not really. But that's more down to the fact that Thomas doesn't make mistakes.

And that he, for the most part, makes good friends.

Grant was his first real friend. Genevieve was his second. She's brilliant and she deserves better company, but despite his better attempts, Thomas is a selfish man. He always has been.

Being deprived of the most basic of needs will do that to a person, he guesses. It's his way of compensating. He'd rather have too much than not enough.

He hasn't eaten since last morning, so when he finally manages to choke down the spare medication kept tucked away in the back of her bathroom cabinet, she's ordered him take out of all things and they eat it downstairs, surrounded by her notes and the hum of laptops. The conversation runs toward what happened, inevitably, but Genevieve is a well-adjusted person, so while it's not easy, it's tolerable.

But he can't tell her. No.

He wants to. He doesn't want to lie, but... well, that's life. More specifically, it's Bertram Walker's life.

The story goes like this, vaguely: Bertram Walker was mistaken for someone else; someone by the name of Robert, who's Italian, and is of a similar build to Thomas himself. It works because as far as everyone knows, Bertram Walker doesn't gamble, and he does know Italian. Enough to hold a conversation. Enough to easily appear as Italian himself. He doesn't know the people who roughed him up. He's a good man, see? He doesn't mix with those types. Bertram Walker attends work and church and spends time with his girlfriend and Mr. Pacini. He watches baseball and football and haunts Ebay and Netflix when he has spare time. He has no reason to be mixing with loan sharks. As for the attack itself, they didn't do much harm. They were more out to scare him than put him in hospital. Though his face and hands have clearly taken some abuse. He can't quite place where they dropped him off, either; he walked for hours before he finally recognized the area.

Add that to the fact that he was off his pills and fucking terrified, and of course, he's going to be having trouble remembering.

That's the same thing they tell the police, and with Genevieve backing him up, he's pretty much invincible. Between Christian and Grant, Thomas Ward was never going to have a problem. It's in his family's nature, and Bertram Walker exploits this unashamedly.

There is no mention of Thomas Ward, or Grant Ward. Of burning houses or dead politicians.

And before he knows it, anti-anxiety medication slowing the thrumming in his bloodstream, the police are gone and he finally manages to fall asleep.

The other pills that keep him that way.


End file.
